Why Wilderness

By R.V. Rasmussen

On this, just months before we welcome in the new millenium, the Alberta Government is in the process of determining whether future generations will be able to enjoy undeveloped wildlands in the 20 distinct types of landscape that define our great Province of Alberta.

I am writing because I believe that our government has abandoned the principles of the Special Places 2000 program and, instead, intends to allow industrial development in our parks.

Understandably, not everyone values wilderness. Why should we care? We already have much to worry about: health care, jobs, education to name but a few.

Why care? When I try to answer that question, I think first of my two young daughters stopping to scoop their first drink from a clear mountain stream. I remember them riding horseback in untouched meadows and canoeing on a mountain stream. I remember the special light in their eyes as we sat around a campfire and reminisced about our day in the wilderness. A pair of great horned owls, birds that are dependent on wild lands for their survival, sang for us that night. I don't know how to place a value on these experiences, but I know that they will forge a different kind of character in my daughters than if they only had the opportunity to walk in city malls.

I think about a time when I sat with friends and family on a wildflower-covered ridge and watched 31 mountain goats, large and small, pick their way across the rugged headwall of the Persimmon Basin in Willmore Wilderness Park. When a yearling stumbled and was nudged back to safety by its mother, I was reminded of my own children and I prayed then that my grandchildren would one day be able to sit in the same meadow to watch the goat's grandchildren traverse that same headwall. In California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, a range not unlike Alberta's Rocky Mountains, the mountain goats are gone. So are the wolves, grizzlies, and big horn sheep. This is the fate that the Klein Government's lack of vision is arranging for our own wildlife.

Wilderness is not just for us. It is also required by the many species that are struggling now to survive what seems to be limitless industrial expansion. We should provide for these creatures simply because they are here and should always be here. At the very least they should not be removed by our careless hands or by callow indifference. In Alberta, we already have a dramatic problem: 30 bird species, 13 species of mammals, 6 species of amphibians and 8 species of reptiles are at risk. Without legislatively protected wilderness, the numbers of species at risk in Alberta will certainly grow. It may be that the very next generation of Albertans will not be able to see a delightful little creature called the Burrowing Owl that dwells only in the Grassland Region.

And wilderness has other values. The boreal forest of northern Alberta is as important a set of earth lungs and source of biodiversity as those Amazonian rainforests that we all hear so much about. We southern Albertans imagine the north of our province as a vast untouched expanse of forest and wasteland bog. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cross-hatched with oil and gas exploration roads, clearcuts and strip mines, it is presently 100% committed to industrial development. Without a strong Special Places program, the few remaining Woodland Caribou that depend on the boreal forest are likely to expire in our own lifetimes.

I have had frustrating discussions with naysayers who insist that those who believe in protecting lands from industrial use and from motorized travel are selfish-that protected areas benefit only a few elite backpackers. I see it differently. Our generation can never exhaust the opportunities that our lands presently provide for our adventures. Would it not instead be selfish of us if we don't secure those opportunities for the next generations?

Protecting our special places isn't about exclusivity. Hunting, fishing, riding, walking, skiing, bicycling and traditional activities like trapping are clearly spelled out in the Special Places program as compatible activities. Even cattle grazing as a substitute to the bison that once roamed our three types of prairie grasslands is an acceptable activity.

Of course, we also need developed parks and we are fortunate to have so many of them. At a small lakeside cottage, four generations of my family have swum, boated and hunted for the small frogs that capture the dreams of children and storks. I remember warm winds whispering us into a barbecue-sated sleep. To argue to save some small part of our country as true wilderness is not to demean the pleasures we humans derive from our domesticated parks. But if we fail to also provide some of the wild places, our children's children will experience a world of limited opportunity. Wilderness isn't the kind of thing that hangs around for the next generation; it's on the run.

I think about our attachment to wilderness as a people and about the settlement of Canada, first by the aboriginal people who wandered across the Bering land bridge and next by the displaced peoples of Europe who arrived by boat. Their character was forged by a wilderness that is almost gone. But that special Canadian Character is not. For, is it not our cold winters, our lush summers, and especially the vast open landscapes that define us as a people? Every year, millions of us visit our national and provincial parks. Doesn't this tell us that we inheritors dream of the quiet pleasures of wilderness. Unfortunately, we don't perceive a problem because we still envision Canada as mostly wilderness. What a shame if, ensnared by this illusion, we let our few remaining wild lands fall to the relentless plough of development.

On one special day in my life, as a 50-year old man, I walked for what seemed endless hours in a sky filled with light along the top of the Starlight Range in Willmore Wilderness Park. I recall with gratitude that my walk was made possible through the foresight and value placed on wilderness 50 years ago by an Alberta Minister of Lands and Forests named Norman Willmore, in whose honour the park was named. We need Norman Willmore's vision more than ever now to secure the Special Places 2000 program. It is because of Mr. Willmore that I have made it a New Year's resolution to speak out on the present government's lack of vision.

As one of six members of the Government's Advisory Committee on Special Places 2000, I visited dozens of communities to ask Albertans about their thoughts on the program. Thousands of Albertans clearly and unequivocally supported the Special Places vision. To the person, they warned that industrial development is not compatible with wilderness and stressed that our parks need to be protected with strong legislation. Our government is not following their advice. Instead, under the government's plan and under the new proposed legislation, our special places will allow industrial development at the stroke of a Minister's pen with no public scrutiny. This isn't some henny-penny's prediction of a dire future -- already our Ministers of Environmental Protection have allowed clear-cut logging, oil and gas development, and mining in our special places.

Many years ago a small group of Canadians, with great foresight secured a commitment by the Federal government to establish three great National Parks in our province: Jasper, Banff and Waterton Lakes. Clearly no one would argue that this was a mistake, that doing so prevented industrial development in our great province. In similar vein, Special Places 2000, done the right way, will be one of those rare legacies for which future generations will be forever grateful.

Now it is our turn here in Alberta. The Special Places 2000 program is a born and bred in Alberta endeavor to provide legislated protection for each of Alberta's 20 different ecological regions. It is meant to ensure that future generations will have the opportunity to experience a native grassland, an untrammeled alpine meadow or an aspen parkland in its natural state. If would be unforgivable if our government's indecision caused us to bypass this opportunity. Yet, presently our special places system includes only 5 of the 20 regions and is only 5% complete.

I hope that other Albertans will also put Special Places 2000 on their New Year's resolution list. Please join me in respectfully but forcefully asking Mr. Klein and his government to complete the Special Places 2000 vision as it was meant to be--a system of places with legislated protection from industrial development.